Sunday, January 23, 2011

Open Gym

Friday, the girls and I went to “open gym” at one of the local gymnastics centers.

It turned into a fiasco.

It started innocently enough. My sister texted me at about 9 am (which is too early for me) and asked if we wanted to go to the open gym with her and my niece. An hour of my children running themselves ragged on padded floors and trampolines? Perfect. I got the girls out of bed and dressed and we were ready to go.

1st Mother of the Year moment:

We are always running late. I can't seem to get everything done in the time frame I have...ever. It doesn't matter if I give myself an extra hour, by the time we are walking out the door I am completely frazzled, and something didn't get finished. This means I rarely wear makeup, because that is one thing I can cut out of our frantic scurry to leave the house. So...instead of sitting them down to a wholesome bowl of cereal and milk before we left, I put cheerios, fruit loops, teddy grahams and chocolate fish crackers into two little ziplock baggies. Perfect for the car. They also had apple juice, so it wasn’t as if I served their bag of goodies with Dr. Pepper or something.

We got to the gym at about 12pm and the girls were bouncing around, totally excited. When we got to the counter to pay, the receptionist said, it’s only $3 for two kids, since the session is halfway over… What? It turns out that Tuesday is 12-1pm open gym, and Friday is 11:30-12:30 for open gym. Thanks for making things as confusing as possible. It was less expensive, but we also had only a half an hour to play.

The girls had a rad time anyway. They jumped, they skipped, they frolicked, they fell on their faces and then laughed getting up.

2nd Mother of the Year moment:

The gym has this pit filled with blocks of foam. Underneath the foam is a trampoline, and all of the kids jump off the sides of the pit as if they were jumping into a swimming pool. Pretty fun, right? Roo jumped in, and a few minutes later wanted to get out. She was having a hard time and started to fuss, but then she would get determined and try again. My MoTY moment? I found my daughter floundering in a pit full of foam blocks extremely funny and took this picture so I could send it to a couple of my friends.

Now let me tell you (before you decide I'm a sadist, or call CPS) that this picture looks a lot worse than it actually was. There are no tears on those cheeks and I was standing right next to her. This isn't an "I'm scared" cry, this was an "I'm frustrated" cry.... However when I look at this picture now, I think, get her out of there you jerk!

Don't worry guys, It wasn't all tears and mean moms. They actually had a lot of fun. Here is a picture of the girls on the big swing at the gym. This picture was taken after the foam blocks pit, so you can see that Roo isn't traumatized. This was actually pretty cute, because as you can see, Roo and Mads both got to ride it together and so did my niece. (She is the little blonde one refusing to look at the camera). The gym helper pushed them considerably slower than the girls we watched on the turn before ours, but I'm pretty sure that was because of Roo. While Mads looked like she was slightly bored the whole time, Roo hung on so tight her little knuckles were white.

My 3rd and final Mother of the Year moment (at the gym):

I lost my keys at the gym.

I. Lost. My. Keys. At. The. Gym.

When the girls had their shoes and coats on, and we were ready to walk out into the pouring down rain, I put my hand in my pocket and realized I had no keys. I am not going to detail the entire search, because truthfully, it took me 40 minutes to find them. 40 minutes. Do you have any idea how long 40 minutes is when you are searching for keys in a room that has a million cracks and crevices... not to mention (except I am mentioning it) the foam block pit of doom? I had finally given up. I thought they were lost forever, and so I called my sister-in-law and was working up the nerve to ask her to run to my house and search for my spare keys. Because, of course I had no idea where my spare keys were. Perhaps a coat pocket? Anyhoo, while I am talking to the sister in law, a mom walks up to me and asks if the keys in her hand were mine. "Yes, Thank you!" I say. She told me that she had accidentally picked them up because she thought they were hers.

Here's what I was thinking. "You have been watching me search for my keys for 40 minutes, while your goofy looking little darling has her gymnastics class. Not only have I been looking for my keys, but so have 2 other people that work here at the gym. You have sat there and watched me look for my keys for 40 MINUTES. And now that I am on my phone asking for someone to find my spare keys, almost in tears, you decide to check your pocket and see if the extra set of keys in your pocket are mine? Are you the biggest jerk ever? Or just completely self absorbed? Did I AMUSE YOU searching frantically for my keys?"

Here's the kicker to my lost keys story. When my sister arrived, I was parallel parked, and she parked right behind me. I mean right behind me, I couldn't even walk between our cars. No problem, since we were going to be leaving at the same time. Unfortunately, the car behind her parked really close.... yep, you guessed it. My sister was stuck in her parking spot until I found my keys.